


One Last Time

by the_dread_e



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Blood and Injury, Guilt, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2020-01-04 12:36:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18343820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_dread_e/pseuds/the_dread_e
Summary: Jessie muses on what comes next.





	One Last Time

**Author's Note:**

> I just started replaying FF7 on the Switch, and my undying love for a character that has two seconds of screen time has persisted lo these many years. Here's a little something about Jessie.

The world hasn’t come crashing down just yet, but it's about to.

Jessie stares up at the station atop the support pillar. She can hear Barret’s arm firing with extreme prejudice at the Shin-Ra soldiers foolish enough to stand against him. It’s good to know that he’s still alive. It’s good that Wedge got up to help him, though she can’t make him out now.

Jessie feels a stab of worry for Biggs. She hasn’t seen or heard from him since she started her race up the staircase. The pain reverberates beneath her hands. She keeps one of them pressed to the bullet wound in her gut in a vain attempt to stop the bleeding. The other, she struggles to raise into her line of sight. She needs to see just how much blood she’s lost. Her hand is the darkest shade of red and the liquid oozes down her arm as she studies her fingers.

_Maybe it was too much to ask for a clean death,_  she muses once she can’t hold up her arm anymore. It falls against the steel stairs. She’s sure the impact should sting, but she doesn’t feel anything but cold.

_Was this what it was like for Mom and Dad?_ Jessie wonders if she’ll see her parents wherever she’s going. Shin-Ra's toxic pollution had taken them years ago. Did they still exist, or had the reactors sucked them up with the rest of the Planet’s energy?

What about the people that were killed during the reactor bombings? Had they all been processed out of existence? Were they waiting for her? It was her bomb that killed them all. She was directly responsible.

Was that what waited for her? Eternity of judgement or becoming the pollution that strangled the population of the Midgar slums?

Jessie squeezes her eyes shut as tears start to well up. She can’t die crying. She is a member of AVALANCHE. She forces her eyes open and bites her bottom lip as she forces the tears down.

Something falls passed her perch. She pretends not to notice that it was Wedge.

‘Someone has to survive.’ She hisses through her teeth. The pain is starting to subside now. She lets her other hand slip from her stomach. There doesn’t seem to be a point to trying to slow the blood flow. ‘Tifa...’

Tifa had left the sector hadn’t she? Maybe she is still on her errand.

‘Please...’ Jessie begs the bullet riddled air around her. ‘Please...it can’t end this way.’

The sounds around her grow muted as her vision begins to swim. It won’t be long now. She can vaguely feel the staircase around her vibrating. The bombing mechanism must have been triggered. The tears slip down her cheeks as the inevitability of their failure weighs down on her.

When she opens her eyes again, Jessie sees two familiar silhouettes hovering above her.

‘Cloud?’ It seems impossible. He’d been lost at the last reactor bombing, hadn’t he? Jessie struggles to parse her thoughts. Hadn’t she spent that night half way into the Seventh Heaven’s cheapest hooch? She hadn’t let herself cry then. It was foolish to cry over someone she’d only known a day or two.

Jessie pushes that thought aside as she feels the tears start up again. Cloud kneels over her, and Tifa stands behind him. Her hands over her mouth as her eyes search Jessie’s face for answers.

‘I’m glad...I could talk to you...one last time.’ Jessie’s breath catches in her throat. She ignores Tifa’s tears. It’s getting harder to form coherent thoughts.

‘Don’t say last.’ Cloud’s quiet voice breaks through the din around them. Jessie manages a smile.

‘That’s...all right...’ As she says it, Jessie realizes that it is. ‘Because...of our actions...many...people died.’ She lets the next thought slip out as the lights start to dim around her. It usually doesn’t get so dark under the plate. ‘...this probably...is our punishment...’

The last words don’t quite make it across her lips. She wants to tell them to continue the fight until Shin-Ra's destroyed, but her vocal cords refuse to listen. Her eyes plead with her fellow rebels, but they’ll never hear the message.

_Finish this. No matter what it takes._

Cloud and Tifa press on, and Jessie lets her head slump to the side. She can hear the helicopter above once the sounds of battle quiet. She feels the explosion above her. As the large hunks of the pillar fall around her, Jessie manages to tilt her head to watch three figures swing on a support line to safety.

She allows herself a smile before her eyes close for the last time.

_Maybe it isn’t so hopeless after all._


End file.
